recordshttp://www.maximumpc.com/taxonomy/term/14794/
enG.Skill Sets DDR4 Memory Frequency Recordhttp://www.maximumpc.com/gskill_sets_ddr4_memory_frequency_record_2015
<!--paging_filter--><h3><img src="/files/u69/gskill_ripjaws_4_0.jpg" alt="G.Skill Ripjaws 4" title="G.Skill Ripjaws 4" width="228" height="131" style="float: right;" />The need for speed</h3>
<p>Now that Haswell-E and accompanying Intel X99-based motherboards requiring DDR4 RAM are here, we expect to see a lot of record announcements. It always happens when new platforms are introduced, and G.Skill is wasting no time adding to its virtual shelf of overclocking tropies -- <strong>G.Skill today announced that it set a new memory record for fastest DDR4 memory frequency at 4,255MHz</strong>.</p>
<p>Record breaking attempts are sometimes marred by reality, which in this case is the realistic nature of running DDR4 RAM at 4255MHz. To achieve the record, G.Skill used a single 4GB stick of RAM in single-channel mode, even though the X99 chipset supports quad-channel memory. However, quad-channel mode requires four sticks, and running multiple modules isn't conducive to chasing frequency records.</p>
<p>In any event, that's how these things are played out, and for now, G.Skill holds the record. It achieved the feat using its Ripjaws 4 Series plugged into an Asus Rampage V Extreme motherboard with an Intel Core i4 5960X CPU (liquid nitrogen cooling was also used). Timings were set at 18-18-18-63.</p>
<p><em>Follow Paul on <a href="https://plus.google.com/+PaulLilly?rel=author" target="_blank">Google+</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/paul_b_lilly" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/Paul.B.Lilly" target="_blank">Facebook</a></em></p>
http://www.maximumpc.com/gskill_sets_ddr4_memory_frequency_record_2015#commentsBuild a PCddr4g.skillHardwareMemoryoverclockingramrecordsripjaws 4NewsMon, 12 Jan 2015 17:07:23 +0000Paul Lilly29241 at http://www.maximumpc.comDiablo III Shatters PC Sales Records, Server Woes Postpone Real-Money Auction House Launchhttp://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/diablo_iii_shatters_pc_sales_records_server_woes_postpone_real-money_auction_house_launch
<!--paging_filter--><p><img src="/files/u138055/diablo_3.jpg" width="228" height="188" style="float: right;" />Would-be demon slays ran into a big problem during Diablo III's opening week; nasty errors and server issues forced many first-day buyers into involuntarily sheathing their swords. The congestion highlighted concerns about the game's always-on DRM, but it turns out there was a good reason for the bad server woes: Blizzard claims Diablo III is the fastest selling game in PC history. Wait! Isn't PC gaming supposed to be dead?</p>
<p>Over 3.5 million PC gamers bought Diablo III within 24 hours of the game's launch, Blizzard said in a press release. Another 1.2 million World of Warcraft joined the party, too, bringing the total number of day one gamers -- many of whom were mere attempted gamers -- to a whopping 4.7 million.</p>
<p>That number jumped to 6.3 million players by the end of the first week of sales, though Blizzard is quick to point out that those figures "do not include players in Korean Internet game rooms, where Diablo III has become the top-played game, achieving a record share of more than 39% as of May 22."</p>
<p>Amazon.com's John Love says Diablo III shattered records for the online retailer, too. "Not only did Diablo III break the record for most preordered PC game of all-time on Amazon.com, but it also shattered the record for best day-one sales for any PC game ever on Amazon.com."</p>
<p>Speaking of Diablo III, if you're one of the aforementioned millions of players, you might want to swing over to the Diablo 3 forums, where <a href="http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5149181449">the game devs just outlined</a> past hotfixes, impending patches and account security concerns. Buried deep in the wall o' words in a brief announcement about <a href="http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/blizzard_drops_diablo_iii_teaser_trailer_-game_auction_house_details">the contentious real-money auction house</a>; given the server issues, Blizzard isn't sure when the auction house will launch, but they know for a fact it won't be in May.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/first_impressions_diablo_iiis_hits_misses_and_head-scratchers">You know what we think about Diablo III</a>. What're your impressions so far?</p>
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/diablo_iii_shatters_pc_sales_records_server_woes_postpone_real-money_auction_house_launch#commentsdiablodiablo 3Diablo IIIGamingPC gamingrecordssales recordsNewsThu, 24 May 2012 18:04:38 +0000Brad Chacos23387 at http://www.maximumpc.comFuture Tense: Music Depreciationhttp://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/future_tense_music_depreciation
<!--paging_filter--><p>Recently, a correspondent with more attitude than common sense excoriated me for having no taste. He could be right, but I doubt it.</p>
<p>I had mentioned in passing that I have thousands of CDs in my music collection, enough to fill a 3-terabyte hard drive. This particular adversary’s argument was that because taste is the product of a thousand distastes, obviously I had none because I had failed to winnow my collection. It doesn’t take a lot of smarts to realize that this is an inaccurate application of Sturgeon’s Law (“90% of everything is crud.”) The inaccuracy arises from the assumption that little or no taste was applied in the original purchases. (The assumption that 5,000 CDs is too many, that there isn’t enough quality music in the world to fill 5,000 CDs is even more horrifying.)</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/futuretense-musicdep-cds.jpg" width="480" height="257" /></p>
<p>But in one sense, the adversary was right that I have thousands of songs that I haven’t listened to in years. My Uncle Morrie was also right back in the 70s when he looked at my collection of vinyl disks and remarked that I had more music than I could listen to. Ironically, Uncle Morrie was his own kind of pack rat. Among other things, he collected jeans. After he died, we found more than 100 pairs in his closets, more jeans than any one person could wear. Right. I’d rather collect music.</p>
<p>Let’s assume I have at least 6,000 hours of music on the shelves. If I were to listen to ten hours of music a day, it would take 500 days to play every track. But nobody listens to their music collection that way. We pick and choose based on our changing moods. We have collections because we want to have choices.</p>
<p>A completist has to have every item in the set, regardless of the quality (or lack of) in any individual item—but a collector gathers items of value that he selects for specific qualities. With music (as with books, comics, movies, and TV shows) the collector wants to have a purposely selected repertoire of entertainment choices.</p>
<p>I should be grateful to the adversary because he reminded me I wanted to write about the history of music recording. Humanity’s relationship with music has fundamentally changed over the last hundred years. Music has become a much greater part of our lives—but at the same time, that convenience has reduced much of its impact and importance.</p>
<p>Before electricity, all music was live. We either created it ourselves or listened to someone else create it. The only distribution system was sheet music. Knowing how to play a piano, a guitar, a violin, was an important skill. A marching band was a delicious treat. A music hall was a cultural center. If you wanted to experience an epic performance of an opera, or hear a major symphony, you had to go to a concert hall. Music was an event. It was a performance. It was ephemeral, it existed only in the moment, and then it disappeared forever.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/futuretense-musicdep-egyptianbard.jpg" width="400" height="243" /></p>
<p>We have no recordings of any music prior to 1877, when Edison invented the phonograph. We have little idea what the music of ancient Greece or Rome actually sounded like. We have some hints of traditional Inca and African and Native American music. A great deal of the Chinese and Japanese musical traditions have survived over the centuries and we have European musical texts dating back almost a thousand years. But even the best recreations are still only recreations—filtered through contemporary experience and sensibilities. They are interpretations of what we think the original experiences might have been.</p>
<p>Electricity made it possible to record, store, and distribute music accurately and widely. The early days of records made it possible for a performer or an orchestra to reach people all over the world, a larger audience than a lifetime of live performances could reach. Records created a whole new kind of fame for performers.</p>
<p>When radio broadcasting began in the early '20s, it created a new kind of national identity. People everywhere could experience the same events in synchrony. The radio brought news and entertainment into homes everywhere, connecting even the most distant dwellers to their big-city neighbors. Music, both live and recorded, reached whole new audiences. People who might never have heard an opera or a symphony or even a simple song could now be a part of the developing urban culture.</p>
<p>Prior to the invention of radio, mother might read aloud to the family, usually a chapter of a book. On special occasions, someone in the family would play an instrument or sing. After the radio arrived in the parlor, the personal creation of entertainment declined. After dinner, the family would gather in the living room to listen to the evening’s news and entertainment, rescheduling itself to the various weekly programs. And as the radio became the focus of the family, the family identity gradually became homogenized to that role-models portrayed in the nightly dramas.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/futuretense-musicdep-radio.jpg" width="300" height="291" /></p>
<p>And radios were big in those days! They were cabinet-sized behemoths that filled a corner of the room, with huge tubes that doubled as space-heaters filling the top half, and a 12-inch speaker in a large enclosure on the bottom. The sound quality could be fairly impressive.</p>
<p>On Sundays, the network radio stations would play serious music—symphonies or operas, noteworthy pieces of classical importance. Listeners who had never had the chance before, now became familiar with the works of Beethoven and Mozart, Tchaikovsky and others. Additionally, classical music pieces were often used as themes for movies and radio programs. Franz Lizst’s Les Preludes was the theme for the Flash Gordon serials, Rossini’s William Tell Overture is practically synonymous with The Lone Ranger, and who doesn’t sing “kill the wabbit!” while listening to Wagner?</p>
<p>In the '40s, table radios (eventually clock radios) became commonplace. They could never match the big speakers for volume or impact, but they took up less room and could fit in kitchens and bedrooms for personal listening. In the '50s, television stole radio’s nighttime audiences, so radio had to reinvent itself. FM and FM stereo provided significantly better sound quality than AM—true high-fidelity—so it became the new home of classical music. Car radios became a standard feature on all new cars, no longer a pricey add-on, so drivers could listen to news and ball games on their AM stations. The invention of the transistor radio made AM an even more portable medium. The baby boomers took to it like puppies to kibble.</p>
<p>By the end of the '50s and the beginning of the '60s, teenage boomers were listening to rock and roll everywhere. Every major city had at least one, sometimes several competing, rock and roll stations. The DJs were the helmsmen of the burgeoning rock culture—elevating Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, the Beach Boys, and eventually that band from Liverpool into icons. On weekends, teens went to a dance concert to hear a live band or to a teen club where a DJ spun records, but even on school days, teens gathered to listen to 45rpm singles in their bedrooms. The portability of music was first a delicious novelty, a luxury, and finally a convenience—but that convenience changed everyone’s relationship with our music.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/futuretense-musicdep-boombox.jpg" width="450" height="294" /></p>
<p>As the '60s turned into the '70s, car stereos and cassette players and boom boxes made music even more portable. The result was that as consumers became more and more accustomed to that convenience and portability, music stopped being an event. It became a kind of auditory wallpaper. Soon it was everywhere and often inescapable. Weird stuff dripped out of elevators and kitschy coffee shops, something called “easy listening.” That meant you didn’t have to pay attention to it.</p>
<p>The unintended consequence of all this convenience was that music began to lose much of its emotional impact. Part of it was that recording technology couldn’t handle the wide dynamic range of most music, so the music had to be compressed—the high peaks of drumbeats were audibly limited. The playback technology was even worse. Music played over most radios was small and tinny. Speaker systems were cheap, often dreadful, and almost always sonically mismatched for their environment.</p>
<p>There were some exceptions. One was the movie theater, where images were wedded to sound. Magnetic sound tracks provided significantly better quality, and theater owners had to invest in decent loudspeakers and amplifiers anyway. Turning up the volume often hides the lack of dynamic range, but if you listen to any MGM soundtrack from that era (Dr. Zhivago, for example) you can hear how compressed the sound really was.</p>
<p>Another exception was the enthusiasm of hi-fi hobbyists. In their near-fanatic pursuit of great sound they turned high end stereo gear into an industry. High-fidelity stereo freaks were dedicated to restoring both the physical and emotional impact to recorded music. The stereo magazines of that era often discussed how the home experience was different than the live experience and whether or not a recording should be judged by how well it recreated the live experience or whether the home experience should be weighed on its own merits.</p>
<p>Sony’s cassette-playing Walkman made music a personal experience. The sound quality of a properly calibrated set of earbuds or headphones could be remarkable and the sight of someone walking down a city street plugged into some unshared reverie became commonplace. In the glory days of cassettes, enthusiasts ripped their own music tapes from vinyl records. With a knapsack full of cassettes and extra batteries, you could be set for the day. But the Walkman was a mechanical device with a couple of miniature motors that had to withstand the rigors of portability. The lifespan of even the most rugged player was often less than a year.</p>
<p>The emergence of the MP3 player—the iPod and all the wannabes—is the current evolutionary phase of portable music. The first ones had hard drives, but now the music player is solid-state, nearly unbreakable, and with enough capacity that you can carry a whole library of listening in your pocket. (Not quite an entire collection of 5,000 CDs, but certainly your favorites.) Add video and maybe a few games and you have a complete personal entertainment device. <br />Where do we go from here?</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/futuretense-musicdep-ipod.jpg" width="300" height="376" /></p>
<p>We’re already seeing smartphones and tablets doubling as music and video players, and Amazon now lets you stream selections from your library direct to almost any device you own. It may be that portable music will disappear as a product and become instead a fungible (look it up) service.</p>
<p>What all of this history proves is that human beings have an enormous hunger for music. Recording and playback technology has evolved to meet that hunger. We seek out music everywhere, we bring it home, we take it with us, we tailor it, we use it and even abuse it. (Spike Jones, P.D.Q. Bach, Weird Al Yankovich.) But the continuing evolution of technology has also produced a profound shift in our personal relationship with music.</p>
<p>For many (most?) consumers, music has now become a completely individual experience. You design your listening to suit your own moods and tastes, you create a unique soundtrack for your life. Your relationship with music no longer depends on availability of performers or broadcasts. You no longer have to share your music with others. Your music is a personal event that you summon at will.</p>
<p>Depending on what you want it to be, music can be wallpaper, soundtrack, anthem, or epiphany. Depending on how you listen to it, music can be background or immersive. Our technology not only gives us a choice in what we listen to, but also how we listen to it. Music is now a mutable resource.</p>
<p>On the one hand, it can be argued that having music be so casually available produces a context of disrespect for all music. Because it’s so easily obtained, it’s no longer a special event. We can regard it as disposable, replaceable, even irrelevant.</p>
<p>But on the other hand, it is just as easy to argue that having access to so much music as a regular part of life makes it possible for all of us to enrich our lives with even more musical discoveries than ever before. It’s an opportunity to widen our menu of choices and expand our personal repertoires.</p>
<p>What do you think? What’s your experience?</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>—————</p>
<p><em>David Gerrold is a Hugo and Nebula award-winning author. He has written more than 50 books, including "The Man Who Folded Himself" and "When HARLIE Was One," as well as hundreds of short stories and articles. His autobiographical story "The Martian Child" was the basis of the 2007 movie starring John Cusack and Amanda Peet. He has also written for television, including episodes of Star Trek, Babylon 5, Twilight Zone, and Land Of The Lost. He is best known for creating tribbles, sleestaks, and Chtorrans. In his spare time, he redesigns his website,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.gerrold.com/" target="_blank">www.gerrold.com</a></em></p>
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/future_tense_music_depreciation#commentsCDshistorymp3smusicRadiorecordsWalkmanFuture TenseColumnsFeaturesWed, 21 Dec 2011 21:58:24 +0000David Gerrold21853 at http://www.maximumpc.comNew York Doctor the New King of Kong (Again)http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/new_york_doctor_new_king_kong_again
<!--paging_filter--><p>Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi! Actually, the former King Kong record holder isn't dead, but he has been dethroned by Hank Chien, a 35-year-old doctor from Queens, New York, <a href="http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=27&amp;id=2343">according to Twin Galaxies</a>.</p>
<p>Chien scored 1,068,000 points in less than three hours, enough to reclaim the high score after losing the title of King of Kong to Billy Mitchell, who himself was ousted by Steve Wiebe.</p>
<p>"Although I was excited to reclaim [the high score], nothing beats the first time," Chien said in an interview with Twin Galaxies, the self-proclaimed world authority on player rankings, gaming statistics, and championship tournaments. "Of course it was harder this time, however I have gotten better since last time so relatively speaking it was a bit easier."</p>
<p>If any of these names sound familiar, then you probably watched the 2007 documentary "<a href="http://www.netflix.com/Movie/The-King-of-Kong/70068647">The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters</a>." The flick follows Wiebe as he tries to get the high score in Donkey Kong, while also illuminating viewers on the whole culture of arcade games and Twin Galaxies.</p>
<p>For now at least, Chien can celebrate his achievement, but he knows it probably long last long.</p>
<p>"I know that the current score still has much room for improvement, so it is likely that this back and forth will continue for a while longer," Chien said.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u69/hank_chien_dk.jpg" width="405" height="378" /></p>
<h5 style="text-align: left;">Image Credit: Twin Galaxies</h5>
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/new_york_doctor_new_king_kong_again#commentsarcadegameshank chienking kongrecordsSoftwareSoftware Newstwin galaxiesVideogamesNewsThu, 13 Jan 2011 15:54:51 +0000Paul Lilly16632 at http://www.maximumpc.comCrosley's USB Turntable is New Old-Schoolhttp://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/crosleys_usb_turntable_new_old-school
<!--paging_filter--><p>It's a bit late for a Father's Day gift, but if your dad also happens to be a geek -- or owns a computer -- you can <a href="http://www.gadling.com/2010/09/15/crosley-radio-revolution-travel-friendly-battery-powered-turnt/">add new life</a> to his vinyl records with the Crosley Radio Revolution CR6002 travel turntable.</p>
<p>Crosley's built a product line of nostalgic looking devices, but this portable turntable is anything but. Sure, it plays those old 33 1/3 and 45 RPM records, but it doesn't look anything like the record players you've seen back in the day. In addition to a modern look and USB connectivity, the CR6002 also comes with few modern amenities. Take a peek:</p>
<ul>
<li>Software suite for ripping and editing audio content</li>
<li>FM transmitter</li>
<li>Dynamic full range stereo speakers</li>
</ul>
<p>Crosley says the CR6002A will be <a href="http://www.crosleyradio.com/Product.aspx?pid=1869">available soon</a> for $150. In the meantime, check out <a href="http://vimeo.com/14555354">this video</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u69/crosley_turntable.jpg" alt="" width="405" height="237" /></p>
<h5 style="text-align: left;">Image Credit: Crosley</h5>
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/crosleys_usb_turntable_new_old-school#commentscrosleyHardwaremaximum techmobilerecordsturntableusbvinylNewsMon, 20 Sep 2010 12:16:50 +0000Paul Lilly14594 at http://www.maximumpc.com